


The Emotional Afterlife of Noah Czerny

by Bookworm1063



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:13:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27799774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bookworm1063/pseuds/Bookworm1063
Summary: Knowing his final sacrifice approaches, Noah revisits different, defining moments from his life and afterlife, exploring the emotions that come with them.Each chapter is written for a prompt from Czernsgiving 2020.
Comments: 14
Kudos: 12
Collections: Cznernsgiving 2020





	1. Regret

Noah Czerny had been sitting on his own windowsill for the last hour, watching himself get drunk on his mother’s birthday schnapps.

He’d been looping though the same four-hour party for almost a day now, watching everything play out. Noah had other things he could be doing—helping his friends search for Glendower, or reenacting his own death. Instead, he kept coming back here.

_I miss you. I miss you. I miss you._

There was a knock on the door. Past Noah flopped back onto his bed, not even trying to hide the schnapps bottle he’d stolen.

“Noah?” One of Noah’s sisters opened the door. “Mom’s looking for you—” She cut herself off when she saw the bottle.

Past Noah winked. “I won’t tell if you don’t.”

_Tell her you love her,_ Present Noah thought. _Hug her. Go downstairs with her. She’s your sister. You don’t have that much time._

But of course, Past Noah couldn’t hear him.

Noah drifted through his mother’s birthday party, watching his family as they hugged and laughed, as his mother opened her presents. Past Noah was still upstairs.

He should have been here. 

Noah should have been here, alive, with his family. Not wandering through the party as a ghost.

Around him, the timeline shuddered and blurred. People fell away on either side, and then Noah was in his parent’s living room again. This time, there was no one there except his sister, Adele.

She was sitting at the end of the sofa, staring out the window. A picture frame sat on her lap. Noah moved closer to get a better look.

It was him. Past Noah had one arm around each of his sisters, a smile on his face, and no sign of the smudge across his cheek that marked Noah’s death now.

“Noah,” Adele said. Noah flinched back, certain, for an instant, that his sister could see him. But she couldn’t.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I… I should have been there for you. I don’t know what you needed. I should have paid more attention…”

Noah dropped to his knees next to Adele. His fingers brushed against her cheek, and she shivered.

“This isn’t your fault,” Noah whispered. 

Adele couldn’t hear him any more than she could see him. She continued to weep.

Noah stayed with her until he couldn’t stand the sound anymore.

Noah found himself, again, at his mother’s birthday party.

This time, he returned earlier, watching his sisters climb the stairs, calling out for him. They needed help with the food, with the decorations, with the cleaning, and Past Noah was still in bed.

It was Adele who shoved open Noah’s bedroom door. “Noah? Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

“It’s okay,” Past Noah said. He climbed out of bed and dragged on a bathrobe, kissing the top of his sister’s head on his way past her. “I couldn’t sleep, anyway. Not with all the racket you two were making.”

_Why didn’t you thank her for waking you up? You almost missed Mom’s party. Why didn’t you help more?_

Part of Noah hated his past self, his alive self, for all the time he’d wasted, for all the ways he’d hurt his family. The other part of him just wanted to be his past self again.

He could never be that, though. So he lived the moment again. And again. And again.


	2. Anger

Noah couldn’t remember why he’d bought his car.

It was to get where he needed to go, back before he could just _be_ there, but he didn’t know why his car was a red Mustang. It was obnoxious. And unnecessary.

Noah lingered outside of Aglionby Academy—not the Academy his friends attended, but the one he had, seven years ago. Past Noah and a younger Barrington Whelk were standing next to Noah’s Mustang, maps spread over the roof of the car. They were preparing to hunt down the ley line.

“I don’t know,” Past Noah said. “Do you think it’s higher up in the mountains?”

“Todd Green told me there’s ghosts up there,” Whelk said, half joking. “Haunted caves and shit.”

“Oh no,” Past Noah said, laughing. “How terrifying. Can I hold your hand?”

Whelk rolled his eyes and shoved Noah away. “Come on. We’ll take your car.”

Present Noah’s hands had curled into fists at his sides. Most days, Noah thought that Whelk had been his friend, and that he’d been desperate, and that maybe the world had broken him.

Some days, Noah remembered that Whelk had _killed him_. 

All around Noah, the wind picked up, sending leaves and snack wrappers skittering across the pavement. A few feet away, a car window exploded inward with a crash.

Young Whelk and Past Noah looked up, shocked. Whelk started to fold up the maps. Present Noah moved closer to them, sending the papers blowing away across the hood of the car.

For the first time in a long time, Noah was angry.

“You did this to me!” he screamed. “This is your fault! I’m like this because of you! I want more than this!” He threw his words at Whelk like daggers. He threw them at himself, too. 

No one could hear him. He might as well have been screaming at a brick wall, for all the notice people took.

More car windows shattered. Under his feet, the asphalt cracked. Students started to scream, and Noah could see the teachers starting to emerge from the school buildings.

Noah dropped to his knees. The wind died. The ground stopped shaking.

_Murdered. Murdered. Murdered. You killed me._

_You are the reason I will never have anything more than this._


	3. Longing

The backyard at 300 Fox Way was one of Noah’s favorite places to visit. He came here often—sometimes back to this conversation, sometimes just to sit under the old oak tree and think.

Today, it was Blue sitting under the tree. She was turning a small, sparkling object over and over in her fingers, watching the shadows of the leaves shift against the backyard fence. Noah sat down beside her, careful not to startle her. Almost immediately, he felt stronger.

“Noah,” Blue said. She stopped spinning the sparkly object and placed it in Noah’s palm.

Noah sucked in a breath, as he did every time. _“Glitter.”_

Blue was holding one of those rubber balls they give you after a dentist’s appointment, or that you can buy from a machine for a quarter. This one was clear, so you could see the dozens of flecks of glitter embedded in it.

“I found it in my room,” Blue said. “It reminded me of you.”

“Thank you,” Noah said. He wished he could keep the little ball, but he knew he couldn’t. Noah couldn’t keep anything. He set it back down in Blue’s palm. She seemed to understand, because she didn’t put it away. Instead, she set it down in a patch of sunlight filtering through the leaves, so Noah could watch it sparkle.

“I’m so sorry,” Blue said.

Noah remembered when this conversation had happened, for Blue. They had only just realized that he, Noah, was dead.

“Me too,” he said.

Looking at Blue now, Noah remembered the kiss that Blue hadn’t had yet. He remembered a hundred moments from the coming months. He saw blue flower petals and heard a woman who should have been dead sing, and he wanted to feel it. Really feel it, experience it for the first time, not just see it again, one step removed.

Noah wanted to be able to sit beside Blue in the sunlight, and maybe hold her hand, and not have to remember that he was dead.

The problem was, if he did that, then Gansey died and stayed dead. It was only that fact that let Noah say, “It’s okay, though.”

“No, it’s not,” Blue said. “It was never okay.”

Noah thought maybe he and Blue were both right.

There was nothing any of them could do about it. So Noah sat beside Blue, and he let himself dream. 


	4. Separate

Somewhere else in Virginia, a young Richard Campbell Gansey III was picking himself up off the forest floor, fresh from his first dance with death. Noah was here, watching a man and a woman waltz around their kitchen.

There was a row of flower pots on the counter. Each one was filled with dirt. Each pile of dirt had a hole punched in it, ready for seeds. The seeds themselves were strewn out on damp towels on the kitchen table. The husband and wife had taken a break from planting to dance.

Noah knew this couple. Jesse Dittley and his wife, Abigail.

“Jesse!” Abigail said, laughing. “The towels will be dry as bone if we don’t get these seeds planted.”

“YOU’RE RIGHT,” Jesse boomed. “HERE. I’LL PASS YOU THE FIRST BATCH.”

Abigail took the seeds from Jesse and placed them, three at a time, into the pots. She covered each one with soil, and Jesse took them to the kitchen sink to sprinkle water over them.

Noah watched from outside the Dittley’s window, feeling very much, in that moment, like the ghost he was.

And then something inside fell to the ground.

Noah jumped back, startled. He heard Jesse and Abigail laughing, and he crept closer to the window. Jesse, it seemed, had dropped one of the flower pots.

“SORRY,” Jesse said. “IT SLIPPED RIGHT THROUGH MY FINGERS. I TRIED TO GRAB IT.”

Abigail laughed. “You did the best you could. Here, it may still survive.” Abigail knelt to pick up the seeds and move them to one of the empty pots.

Abigail finished with the plants, and Jesse lined them all up in the sun-drenched windowsills. Abigail rested her hands on Jesse’s shoulders—she had to stand on her tiptoes to do it—and Jesse twirled her around their tiny kitchen. Noah continued to watch from the yard. He was not a part of this memory. He was a separate thing.

Inside, Jesse spun to a stop and took his wife’s hands. “ABIGAIL?”

“Yes, dear?”

“CAN I KISS YOU?”

Abigail smiled and nodded. She had to stand even higher on her toes to make it work. Noah turned away.

He didn’t belong here. This wasn’t part of his story.

Still, Noah found himself sitting outside the house for a long time, watching the sun set from the Dittley’s front porch.


	5. Determined

Out of all his friends, Noah thought that he was probably the one who spent the most time in Ronan’s room. Probably more than even Ronan himself, total, since Noah kept looping back to the same moments in time. Maybe it would even out, after he was gone. Maybe Adam would catch up, eventually, but Noah didn’t know what would happen after Gansey’s second death.

Ronan was standing at his window, tossing a small dream object from hand to hand. Noah knew what it was, of course, but he let Ronan show it to him.

It was a tiny, perfectly clear sphere, so transparent that if Noah hadn’t been holding it, he wouldn’t have known it was there. Noah passed it back and forth a few times, the way he’d seen Ronan do, before giving it back.

The moment Ronan took it, the sphere glowed with golden light, so bright even Noah had to look away.

Ronan stuffed it in his pocket; the glow went out. “Sorry, man.”

The sphere only glowed in the presence of life.

“Not your fault,” Noah said.

Noah knew how his friend was hurting in this moment. He’d returned here, to this conversation, over and over, trying to see if there was any way he could help, but he didn’t think there was, apart from what he’d already been doing.

Still. He would give it his all, this one last try.

“Ronan,” Noah said. “I know you’re… not okay. Right now.”

Ronan’s shoulders tensed, and he shook his head. “Look, Noah, I get that you’ve probably got some semi-psychic undead ghost shit going on, but you don’t want to talk about my problems. I’m fine.”

Noah was not going to let him drop it that easily. “Come on, Ronan.”

“I’m serious,” Ronan said. “Drop. It.” He moved from the window to his dresser, fished around in a drawer, and passed Noah another dream object. “I want you to have this.”

It was the twin to Ronan’s life orb. In Ronan’s hands, it had been an opaque black, so dark it seemed to eat a chunk out of its surroundings, like a little hole in the universe. When Noah took it, silver light shot out from between his fingers.

“A death orb,” Noah said.

“Something like that,” Ronan agreed. “I have no fucking clue what I’m supposed to do with it, so. You have it.”

“Thanks,” Noah said. He couldn’t keep the orb. It would get lost, somewhere on one of Noah’s trips through time. He’d leave it in his room, the way he had a dozen times before. Ronan might find it, in a few months, and wonder why he’d ever dreamt such a thing.

“So where the fuck were you?” Ronan asked. “Last night. Gansey got pissed when he figured out I’d been on the streets again.”

Noah considered asking Ronan if he’d been racing, but he already knew the answer, because he’d already asked. He said, “I was here. Until I wasn’t.”

Ronan blinked. “Okay. You say anything else emotional or philosophical today, and I’m going to throw you out the goddamn window.”

Noah didn’t think he’d managed to fix anything today, but he was glad he’d tried. One last time. Ronan was going to have to work everything out on his own time.

Even though he’d seen some of it—the Barns, their friends, Declan and Matthew, Adam, everything that helped Ronan through the next few months—Noah had to ask, because he didn’t know what would happen after he was gone. “You’re going to be okay, right?”

Ronan sighed. “I only half wanted to do this, Noah,” he said. He pushed open the window.

Noah sighed. Somehow, every time they did this, Noah ended up falling from the second story. “Please don’t.”

“You’re already dead,” Ronan said. “What’s the worst that can happen?”

He tossed Noah out the window.

As he fell, just before he blinked back to the apartment staircase, Noah thought that maybe Ronan had answered his question. In his own way. 

Maybe Noah had been able to help his best friend.


	6. Fearless

The clock was ticking on Noah’s afterlife, and he was choosing to spend one of his last moments in the parking lot at Nino’s.

This was before the demon and the deaths. Here, Noah’s spirit was whole and uncorrupted. He knew he’d have to go back soon, but for now, he was having fun with his friends.

Noah saw the way Blue and Gansey were looking at each other. They’d been careful to position themselves on opposite sides of the group, with Ronan, Noah, and Adam in the middle. This was amusing to Noah, because it made him the middle man twice over.

The group was just leaving Nino’s. It was late; the sun had gone down hours ago, but it was a Virginia summer, so the air was warm.

“Hey,” Ronan said. “Here’s a fucking awesome idea—”

“No,” Blue said immediately. Adam laughed.

“Here’s a fucking awesome idea,” Ronan said again. “You know that hill behind Nino’s?”

“Yes…” Blue said. Her eyes were narrowed with suspicion.

“We take some pizza boxes from the dumpster out back,” Ronan said, “And we go down the hill in those. Like those slides with the burlap sack things at those fucking carnivals.”

“Ronan,” Gansey said. “Why?”

“Come on,” Ronan said. “It just rained. The grass will be perfect. Ten bucks says Parrish chickens out.”

Adam rolled his eyes. “I will if you will.”

Noah knew perfectly well that Ronan was trying to make sure Adam could buy lunch the next day without offending Adam’s pride. Adam probably knew it too, but he said nothing.

“That’s two,” Ronan said. “Noah?”

Noah _wanted_ to. He wanted to go down a rain-slick hill in a pizza box and pretend it could kill him. On one of the last nights of his death, he wanted to be alive.

“I’m in.”

They went around to the dumpster behind Nino’s. Ronan found five mostly intact pizza boxes, and he set them all out in a careful line at the top of the hill.

“Who’s up first?” he asked.

Adam rolled his eyes, sat down in one of the boxes, and pressed his hands to the ground. He glanced back over his shoulder. “If this gets me killed, Lynch, I’m going to haunt you for the next century.”

Ronan laughed and shoved Adam down the hill. Adam threw his hands up as he went, and when he reached the bottom, he somehow managed to avoid toppling off the pizza box.

Ronan threw himself onto the next one. “Well. Looks like I owe Parrish a ten.” He shoved himself down, whooping and cursing the entire way.

Noah, Blue, and Gansey all looked at each other. Noah sat himself down on the closest pizza box.

It was disgusting, coated in pizza grease and trash from the dumpster. Something in the box creaked and ripped. The bottom was already soggy from the ground. The whole thing was probably going to fall apart halfway down the hill. 

“Come on,” Noah said. “It’s not going to get any better the longer you wait.”

Gansey shook his head. “I am not going down this hill on one of those death contraptions.”

“Do you have another way down?” Blue arched her eyebrows. “I’m going, just so I can rub it in Ronan’s face for the next month.” Blue flopped down on her stomach and kicked off. At one point, she hit a bump in the grass, sending the box, with her on it, airborne. Gansey gasped, but Blue stretched her arms out to either side, and for a moment, she was flying.

Then she landed and skidded to a halt next to Adam. She picked herself up, laughing. 

Gansey sighed and sat down next to Noah. “Together?”

Noah nodded.

As they sailed down the hill, Noah threw his arms out the way Blue had and yelled, letting the wind carry away his voice. He watched his friends at the bottom of the hill growing bigger as he sped towards them. Beside him, Gansey was clutching his box for all it was worth, but he was smiling.

_I think you’re beautiful. I think you’re all beautiful._

And somehow, under the electric streetlights at the back of a shitty pizza place, covered in mud from a slide down a hill, they all were. 


	7. Love

Noah’s friends had spent the night in Cabeswater exactly once. Despite all of Gansey and Adam’s best efforts, they had been unable to get the Pig up and running; they could have called someone to get them, but there was no cell reception.

“We could just stay here,” Blue suggested. “There might be phone service by morning.”

The group retreated back into the forest, and the roots of five of Cabeswater’s trees rearranged themselves into moss-padded beds. Berry bushes and streams of fresh water sprang from nowhere. Even once the sun had fully set, the forest was still comfortably warm.

Noah’s friends only got to experience it once. Noah had done this a hundred times.

Everyone was asleep, curled into their moss nests. Overhead, there wasn’t a single cloud to block Noah’s view of the stars. He sat in his own nest, watching them, even as the forest whispered to him.

_It’s time. It’s time. It’s time._

Next to Noah, Gansey stirred in his nest and pushed himself halfway up, just as Noah had known he would. Gansey squinted at Noah and said, “You’re still awake?”

“I don’t sleep,” Noah reminded him.

“Right.” Gansey fumbled around the forest floor for his glasses and shoved them on. “Are you alright, Noah?”

“Have you seen the stars here?” Noah asked. “They’re beautiful.”

Gansey tilted his head back and peered through the canopy. “Yes. They really are, aren’t they?”

Noah knew all of those stars, but Gansey didn’t. He wondered if now, since they’d had this conversation, Gansey would take the time to learn. Noah didn’t have time to find out. He shouldn’t even be here now.

“Gansey,” Noah said slowly. “Do you ever wonder…”

Gansey waited patiently for Noah to collect his thoughts.

“What would you be doing? If you’d never died?”

“Oh,” Gansey said. “I’m not sure. I suppose I never would have started my search for Glendower.”

Noah liked to think Gansey would have found a different quest, but there was no way it would have been this one. He looked around the clearing—Blue, Adam, Ronan, Gansey—and wondered if there was a way he could stay with them.

“I wanted to thank you,” Noah said. Gansey turned to face him.

“Whatever for?”

“Everything.” Noah shrugged. “You let me live in your apartment, even after you found out I’d been lying to you. Even after you found my _body_. You let me be a part of all this. And after how I died… you taught me real friendship.”

“Noah.” Gansey looked a little uncomfortable, but he climbed out of his moss nest and joined Noah in his. “You’re one of my best friends. You don’t need to thank me for being there for you.”

Noah nodded. He had to go. When his friends woke up in the morning, he wouldn’t be there, and they wouldn’t notice.

Gansey would never learn these stars, Noah realized. He wouldn’t remember that he didn’t know them.

“Go back to sleep,” Noah said. “I’m okay. It’s okay.”

Gansey looked at him for a moment, then threw his arms around Noah. Gansey wasn’t generally a big hugger, so Noah wasn’t quite sure what to do. He wrapped his arms around Gansey and hugged him back.

“I’m sorry,” Gansey said, pulling away. “You seemed like you needed that.”

Noah had. He nodded again

“See you in the morning,” Gansey said. “Or later today, I suppose.” He climbed out of Noah’s moss nest and into his own. Noah didn’t move until he was sure Gansey and all the others were asleep.

Noah stood up. Behind him, his nest of moss and roots dissolved back into the ground.

There was Gansey, who had let Noah in. Ronan, with his unexpected kindness. Adam and the quiet way he loved. Blue and her amazing strength.

Noah took one last look at them all. They couldn’t hear him, but he whispered, “I love you.”

Then he went back to a Virginia mansion, and the forest there, and a young boy dying of hornet stings. One last time.


End file.
